


307

by powerandpathos



Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: Blood, Blow Jobs, M/M, Police Officer He Tian, Public Blow Jobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-19 00:13:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11301747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerandpathos/pseuds/powerandpathos
Summary: He Tian responds to a dispatch call while he's on patrol. What happens after probably isn't in his job description.





	307

**Author's Note:**

> [Inspired by this original artwork.](http://yaoi-blcd.tumblr.com/post/160199628165/old-xian-%E9%80%81%E7%BB%99%E5%96%9C%E6%AC%A2%E4%BB%96%E7%9A%84%E4%BA%BA-for-those-who-like-him)

‘307, do you copy?’

He Tian plucks the radio from its port. ‘This is 307,’ he tells the dispatch.

‘Can you respond to a 10-45 on Guangzhong Road? Out the back of Zhangwang Commercial Building. Reported three perps so 10-0, reported unarmed—’

He Tian can already feel headache building. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Showing physical as two males, six foot, dark hair. The third has red hair—’

‘Again?’ He Tian blurts out. He can’t help it. This is going to be the death of him. But his lips are curling upwards already. That scowl… ‘Copy,’ he pushes out. ‘On my way.’

 

* * *

 

It’s a hot night. Too hot for this. He Tian’s shirt clings wet to his back; the aircon in the patrol car kicked out at the beginning of his shift, and the roads are a hot whorl of smog and stinging rain that tugs mist from the tarmac.

It means the roads are silent, pavements empty except for the occasional passing of late-night runners dressed in neon, and the night buses that loom like ghosts through a forest-fire kind of mist.

It's five minutes to the location. Maybe less. He only thinks, _Red hair._ What is this? The third? Fourth?

Empty streets and green traffic lights. An easy pilgrim passage without the sirens. He Tian's head is woollen and thick as he drives, memory hung on the last time this happened. Something had been broken. The summon of a paramedic. Slurred words that were more affectionate than they should have been. Nostalgic, in a way.

He hopes this time will be easy. Laughs quietly to himself as he turns a corner. _Easy._

The location’s a strip of dirt track between tower blocks and the creeping height of the Zhangwang Commercial Building. A little patch of sky lurks above, ashen and grey. He Tian takes a sip of cold coffee as he pulls up, the patrol car rolling to a stop.

He murmurs his arrival into the radio as he waits, watches through the windscreen.

They’re indiscriminate shapes. A shadowed dance of flying fists. A swarm of light and dark that makes He Tian press a hand on his gun. But it doesn’t last long. The flash of blue and red says enough—are warning enough. A glance at the car and the fight’s breaking up already. There’s no confusion; no desperate scrabble for escape. They’ve all done this before.

Like shadows, they slink into alleyways and alcoves that materialise in the darkness, creatures bloodied and limping and silent. There’s only one that remains, lit up by He Tian’s headlights, squinting into the beams, and He Tian stares from behind the wheel.

He’s a patchwork of blood and bruises, muscles wiry and ropish, a string of spit hanging from a heaving mouth. Hair turned wet and rust-red. He’s macabre and ghoulish, a last soldier standing stalwart despite the ruin he’s made of himself, light and shadows making a beast of him that He Tian shouldn’t recognise.

But he does. His heart gives a single, plangent thud. He gets out of the patrol car.

Guan Shan doesn’t move as He Tian comes closer. That’s a different thing: the stillness. Something unfaltering. Always been a fighter, but He Tian remembers the swift, defensive retreats. The nervous ducking around a building, the hammer of a pulse under He Tian’s hand, summer nights and basketball courts and a palm on the back of a neck warm and slick with sweat.

‘Really?’ He Tian says as he comes closer. Guan Shan’s left eye is swollen and taped shut with steristrips. Being watched with one eye is almost a little unnerving. ‘You’re still doing this?’

Guan Shan says, ‘Fuck off.’

‘Fifth time this year,’ He Tian says, a hand on the bare, fight-warm skin of Guan Shan’s shoulder as He Tian turns him around, pulls his wrists together.

‘Fuck _off_.’

‘Starting to think you like this,’ He Tian says. He can hear the edge in his own voice. ‘The handcuffs.’

Guan Shan stills for only a second before he’s thrashing, pulling himself from He Tian’s grasp, a wild thing caught in a snare. Fight or flight. He’s made his decision.

The struggle doesn’t last long; the veins in He Tian’s hands are raised as he holds Guan Shan tight, shoves him against the side of the car. A knee between his thighs, hand across the span of his shoulders. Muscle packed tight and coiled beneath He Tian’s touch. A wild thing. The lockhold doesn’t stop him from struggling still.

He Tian grits his teeth. ‘If you keep doing that you’ll dislocate your shoulder. Watch your wrists.’

His breath is strangled. ‘Like I—give a _fuck_. You _fuck._ ’

He Tian’s glad Guan Shan can’t see him, that his cheek is pressed onto the top of the car, the metal warm to the touch.

‘I can see you smiling in the fucking wing mirror.’

Well. ‘Can you really blame me?’ He Tian says.

‘That’s why this whole thing is fucked up,’ Guan Shan mutters. He’s grown quieter now, and He Tian wonders if he’s noticed—if it was a decision he’s made, or a quiet reluctance like a creature giving in, knowing it’s lost, bowing its head in solemn defeat. The slow movements of a glacier coming to a frozen halt.

He Tian has the impression that Guan Shan would never knowingly—willingly—give up. He Tian should hate that. Condemn that. But nothing has changed, and the familiarity sparks hotly inside of him.

‘Tell me why.’

Guan Shan shifts. He’s growing aware of how close He Tian is. He Tian has not stopped being aware of it.

‘Because the people who want to be in power—who want to have the authority—only want it so they can put other people down. You, wanting justice and peace?’ He clucks his tongue. A flash of metal glinting that He Tian almost misses. ‘Bullshit.’

‘You’re saying police officers are all sadists,’ He Tian sums up. ‘That’s your decision?’

‘You’re the walking fucking proof of it all.’

He Tian grins. ‘All right. If that’s what you want to think.’

Guan Shan shifts again. He Tian swallows. It’ll be dawn soon, a grey haze like a dust swarm filling the sky, the sun huge and indeterminable as it seeps through an ash cloak. He Tian remembers what Guan Shan looked like at dawn, at sunrise. He remembers how he looked at midnight and 3am, sleep-warm and tangled in sheets. Quiet and still—but not because he chose it, some calculated, rationalised decision. Just because he _was._

He Tian’s chest twinges painfully, something stinging keenly. A lodestone embedded in the base of his throat. He knows how eager he’s been to respond to the dispatch calls. He knows he patrols the area too often, skirting the edges of his jurisdiction, just in case.

 _You stupid fuck_ , he thinks. He knows that if he thinks it about himself, Guan Shan will think it about him too. He Tian’s not sure if he cares.

‘You’re not going to change my mind?’ Guan Shan asks.

‘Why bother,’ says He Tian. ‘You don’t change for anyone unless you want to change yourself.’

Guan Shan’s eyes flicker to the wing mirror. He Tian doesn’t look. He doesn’t want to see his expression.

‘You saying that as a cop or as you?’

He Tian laughs, and it’s a hollow sound. It falls flatly in the heated silence. This time of morning—of night—this space where they stand trapped between the shadows of tower blocks—it’s all liminal. Temporary. No one’s meant to be here long. No one’s meant to stay.

What does it mean if they do?

‘I’ll let you decide that,’ He Tian says. He sighs. He tugs Guan Shan away from the car, presses a hand on the top of his head, hair soft and the touch familiar. ‘Watch it,’ he says as he opens the back door.

Guan Shan settles himself in the car, resigned, and He Tian slides into the driver’s seat. It’s too warm to keep the door shut, and he lets his leg hang out, foot scuffing the tarmac.

Their eyes catch in the mirror through the metal grate that divides them. A flash of red. A scowl.

He Tian smirks as he tugs out the report forms. Name, DOB, address, physical. He doesn't need to ask anymore. Didn't need to ask with the first arrest, back when Guan Shan wouldn't meet his eyes in the mirror and his words were clipped and sharp as razors, and He Tian looked down at his fingers and expected blood.

 _How’ve you been?_ he’d asked, struck dumb and stupid enough— _new_ enough—with Guan Shan simmering in the backseat of the patrol car, that he hadn’t known what to say except that.

 _Go fuck yourself,_ Guan Shan said.

And things continued from there.

‘The usual?’ He Tian asks now, pen tapping against the clipboard.

‘Usual?’

He Tian lists off: ‘You didn’t see them. You don’t know what they look like. The attack came from nowhere. You’re not pressing charges.’

A glance in the mirror shows him Guan Shan with his head against the window, eyes staring outwards. There’s nothing out there to look at but a strip of trees, leaves growing thin and brown with the heat, and the concrete stretch of a tower block jutting through hazy Shanghai heat and smog. It’s not much to look at. He Tian doesn’t think Guan Shan’s seeing any of it.

The memories come easily: lazy mornings, bodies stained with each other’s touch, airconditioning drawing goosebumps along their skin, a blush pink as dusk across Guan Shan’s chest, the taste of salt on the back of his neck.

 _What are you thinking about?_ He Tian’d ask, so used to knowing everything, having to understand with Guan Shan that he would always, probably, know nothing. And he’d been right about that. Knowing nothing, _understanding_ nothing, was the only thing he knew at all.

Moody, difficult bastard.

He Tian digs his thumbnail into the centre of his palm.

‘At least you didn’t get caught by surveillance—’

‘That was _one time_ ,’ Guan Shan protests. ‘I told them not to fucking start it there and—’ He breaks off with a huff. Stares back out the window.

He’s not supposed to tell He Tian things like that. He Tian supposes it counts for something that he still slips up—that the guard isn’t up completely. If He Tian were another cop, if someone else had caught the dispatch, He Tian wonders if Guan Shan would say anything at all.

‘If they want to press charges they can,’ He Tian continues. ‘But in the meantime, I’ll write this down as assault. If _you_ want to press charges—’

‘Which you know I won’t.’

‘—then you know where the station is.’

_You know where I am. You've always known where I am._

He watches the muscle jump in Guan Shan’s jaw. There’s blood drying on the sharp edge of it, at his temple, his nose, a strip across his chest like the stroke of a lover’s fingertips left indelibly in red. _No paramedics,_ he asked. Every time. The rib left splintered in his chest the first time, the nose skewed and streaming the third, the arm that hung limp at his side the last.

It makes He Tian burn on the inside, makes him feel colder than he’s had to before. He itches for knives, for skin-split knuckles like the ones Guan Shan wears for sport. For money. For some unseen, unknown glory that He Tian knows he'll never understand.

‘Why are you doing this?’ He Tian asks, staring at the report.

‘Don't fucking start with that shit—’

‘No, I mean—’ He shrugs, one-shouldered and nonchalant. Lifts dark eyes to the lightening skyline. ‘On a rational level I know _why._ But you could do anything but this.’

‘Could I. Really. You know that do you, officer?’

‘Oh, don't give me that bullshit.’

‘Bullshit?’ He Tian can hear the sneer in Guan Shan’s voice. ‘Nah, what's bullshit here is you sitting in a fucking cop car making arrests like you're _fair._ Like you follow the _law._ Like rules actually _apply_ to you for once.’

‘Not a kid anymore, Guan Shan.’ He Tian meets Guan Shan’s reflection. ‘Neither are you.’

‘We were never kids.’

‘Fuck,’ He Tian laughs. ‘What was that about bullshit?’ He throws the clipboard onto the passenger seat, twists in his seat until he's staring at Guan Shan through the metal grate. ‘You were a delinquent kid with daddy issues and a chip on your shoulder who let people step on you, and you swung your fists when they told you to because that made you feel _important_ and _strong._ Am I getting close?’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Yeah, all right, fuck me. Poor little rich boy who never took anything seriously when he should have. Who looked at the world like it was a game that he controlled. Who laughed at everything because nothing was ever that _funny._ All right, fuck me.’

Guan Shan is silent and staring. He Tian could guess at his thoughts, his mind coal-dark and burning.

‘The problem,’ He Tian says evenly, eyes steady, ‘isn't me. The problem is you.’

‘Are you _serious_ —’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ He Tian says easily. ‘Your issue is that I’m where I am, which is not the same as where I was. And you’re where you are, which is still exactly. The fucking. Same.’ His smile is slow-coming, slick as an oil spill. ‘You’re angry because nothing’s changed for you, even when it’s changing for everyone else, because you’ve always expected it to change _for you_. And it hasn’t. And whose fault is that?’ He doesn’t wait for a response. ‘You take up the fights. You swing first. You pay the consequences when you lose because you haven’t used your fucking head like you could. You’re still running headfirst into shit that you can’t handle, Guan Shan. Not on your own.’

‘Are you—What is this,’ Guan Shan says flatly. ‘An intervention? Is this you being a cop trying to, what, turn me into an upstanding citizen? Are you fucking kidding me?’

He Tian pushes down the cold stream of fury, a river broken its banks ready to wreck. It’s been a while since he’s felt it like this—this out of control. And no surprise, either, that it’s Guan Shan who tugs out the jagged irritation in him. He knows he won’t look any different to anyone from the outside, but the facade was an easy thing to master after a while.

_No tears, He Tian. You either show nothing or you smile like you could swallow the world whole. There is no acceptable in-between._

He Tian says, ‘What I’m doing is giving you some… friendly advice. I’m thinking you should take it for _once_ in your life.’

Guan Shan snorts. ‘Your _advice_ was never friendly. Your _advice_ came with bruised ribs, all right? Don’t treat me like I’m an idiot.’

‘We’re passed that, I think. Aren’t we? I think those memories got scrubbed out the third time you ended up in my bed. Or maybe it was the fifth. You know, I lose count.’

‘Cunt.’

He Tian shrugs. Guan Shan startles as He Tian swings his legs around and gets out the car. He pops the trunk and pulls out the first aid kit, and Guan Shan’s silent still as He Tian slides into the seat beside him.

He shouldn’t be doing this. But what are protocols when Guan Shan’s involved?

Guan Shan flinches at the first stinging brush of cotton soaked with ethanol solution, before he takes on a kind of stillness that’s just shy of alarming. It changes him from a person He Tian is sitting beside—leaning towards, administering—into a thing that He Tian can touch without repercussion. He Tian wants to see him flinching and snappish; it’s the only proof that any of this hurts. That what _should_ be painful to him _is_.

The ethanol burns He Tian’s nose as he breathes it in, cleanses blood from the pale column of Guan Shan’s throat and the lined cracks of his lips. Only the slightest press of them in protest.

‘Like old times,’ He Tian murmurs wryly, remembering school jackets, collars popped up against the cold, and blood streaming from his palm, raised in absolution.

‘’Course you’re nostalgic about it all,’ Guan Shan mutters. He Tian’s surprised he’s talking. He says nothing as he smears copper-coloured antiseptic over the cuts on Guan Shan’s cheekbone and at his temple, where his hair is cut short and severe. ‘School was a walk in the park for you.’

‘I made the most of it,’ He Tian points out as he works. He can feel Guan Shan’s gaze on his face, challenging and sure of itself in a way it never used to be. It’s… He Tian doesn’t know what to do with it yet. He hasn’t decided. ‘I knew what I needed to succeed.’

‘And that… _success_ had everything to do with late-night study sessions and _nothing_ to do with the figures of your family’s bank account. Sure. Okay. Whatever the fuck you want to believe. If that helps you sleep at night.’

He Tian taps Guan Shan’s shoulder. He can squeeze it tight if he wants, but the skin is red with tension and He Tian’s sure it’ll bloom into a bruise in the morning. The tap is brief enough to feel warmth. That will have to be enough. ‘How’s that chip doing?’ he asks.

Guan Shan makes a disgusted noise. ‘You’re so fucking pretentious. You make me sick.’

 _‘Fuck_ , you’re a hard person to like,’ He Tian huffs out, near breathless with incredulity. Was he always like this?

Guan Shan says, ‘I didn’t ask you to like me.’

It hangs low and looming between them. He Tian can taste the words—their sweet, sweet familiarity—on his tongue. Outside, where the landscape is painted in greyscale through blacked-out windows, the sun is starting to make its burdened ascent over the city, wavering uncertain and heavy on the horizon.

Guan Shan’s blood-free now, watching He Tian through his one clear eye, shining from the acid sting of ethanol and antiseptic. Light leaks through the window, and the russet of his iris, the jagged tips of his hair, start to burn like the glow of a cigarette.

The kiss tastes the same as it always did. The smoky aftertaste of menthols and chewing gum, a whiskey burn that He Tian’s always been eager to taste, curses like glass shards on Guan Shan’s tongue that cut like the sweetest pain. This—before words, before action—just this taste, this feel, is what they know well.

There’s no struggle, Guan Shan’s throat arched to meet He Tian’s mouth, He Tian’s fingers gripped tight in short hair, a hot, quiet intensity simmering in the too-small space. He Tian’s tall enough that his head almost touches the roof; he has to crane his neck, push them both low until Guan Shan’s pressed into the car door, sounds welling in the back of his throat that get swallowed recklessly by their joined mouths.

There’s fumbling and an awkward shift of limbs, handcuffs clattering into the footwell, and then Guan Shan has a hand on the back of He Tian’s neck and another digging beneath the waistband of his trousers, thumbnail pressing between his hipbones, sharp enough to summon blood. He Tian hungers at Guan Shan’s neck.

There’s no finesse. It’s tight and cramped and awkward, all jutting elbows and misplaced hands, He Tian’s radio digging into Guan Shan’s shoulder, Guan Shan’s fingers pulling on the grab handle above the window like a lifeline.

Steam cloaks the windows, a sunrise made blurred and murky from the heat of their breaths, some tiny, intimate exchange of life. He Tian kisses in a way that says he doesn’t want small; he doesn’t want delicacy and something he can cup soft in his palms. Guan Shan kisses back the same: like if he could, he would swallow He Tian whole.

That thought is enough. Enough for He Tian to pull himself back, get the door behind him open so they can fit without He Tian breaking his back. Guan Shan’s unbuttoning his jeans when He Tian kneels back on the seat, one foot on the gravel outside, framed by Guan Shan’s thighs, and—

And he stills.

For a second, he’s blindsided by the metal. It’s new. It’s pretty. It suits Guan Shan in a way that He Tian’s almost embarrassed to realise. He wants to feel it on his tongue.

‘I got it for you,’ Guan Shan says. His voice is rusted and low.

He Tian’s eyes flick up. ‘Really?’

Guan Shan stares at him, and then he’s scoffing, a low hiss whistling between his teeth. ‘Fuck, get _over_ yourself.’

He Tian grins, helplessly. ‘Let a guy have his fantasies.’

‘You don’t need fantasies, you fuck.’

He Tian looks at the piercing. The shivering muscles of Guan Shan’s chest. Blood-split lips.

‘No,’ he says blackly. ‘I don’t think I do.’

He meets an eye that he knows wants to flinch back. He feels something like pride when it doesn’t. Something like disappointment too. That was always half the fun. What does he do if Guan Shan starts to meet him halfway?

The answer is simple: he’ll stand his ground, and let Guan Shan take a bigger bite out of him than he’s used to. He can concede. He can _give._ He’s twenty-one. He’s learnt something in six years.

He knows, looking at Guan Shan, that he’ll have no excuse if someone sees them. His officer number reported to the department. He’ll be stripped of his badge and his gun. Doused in a layer of shame and scandal.

 _And why does that matter?_ he thinks, staring at the dawn-flush of Guan Shan’s chest, the unmarred eye that stares back cruel and desperate and always, always vulnerable. Staring at Guan Shan’s hand wrapped around his cock, a knowing tug, everything of him in proportion.

He’s a skin-dressed machine pumped with blood and made for war that He Tian knows, with unbearable fondness, is soft to the touch. Receptive to touch.

Knows it when he has his mouth around him that Guan Shan will buck—and he does, a lightning flash impulse of his hips that has He Tian almost choking. Salt and heat and cordite on his tongue, and in the still quietness of morning, Guan Shan’s breathing, the whimpers that slip through a bloodied and bitten lip, are gunfire loud, each one a bullet that He Tian takes willingly.

For a second, he eyes Guan Shan’s split-knuckle grip trembling around the grab handle, the  hand that claws into the headrest, the torso caving with the effort to draw breath through bruised lungs. His head is back against the edge of the window, neck arched, purpling already from kiss marks like fractured blushes.

And He Tian can only think, closing his eyes, feeling a pulse point on his tongue, how this blur of pleasure-pain is how it’s always been. Painted with blood by themselves or each other—or someone else. Is there power in this? Something sacrificial? Are their bodies libations?

Does it explain the frenzied hunger He Tian has to get his mouth on the juncture of Guan Shan’s hips, the press of ribs on the underside of his skin? Teeth at Guan Shan’s nipples while He Tian’s hand works at Guan Shan’s cock, fingers pressing lower, a palm cupping his balls. Sweat and spit and pre-come—a pink stain of blood from somewhere—smears over the length of him. No lube for anything else, nothing safe for anything else, but He Tian’s eyes feast at the mess Guan Shan has been made, and he doesn’t need anything else.

He’ll take blame for this handiwork, for every bruise and splinter and fracture, every busted blood vessel.

 _Hurt him, you hurt me,_ he thinks, mouth working again, tongue curling with the metal and pulling hoarse shouts from Guan Shan’s throat. He can’t shut the thoughts out and just _feel_ except to think how Guan Shan is his, how they’ll never see him coming, how every dispatch call made him thankful that there was something alive to still put handcuffs around.

‘That’s it, babe,’ he murmurs into Guan Shan’s thigh. ‘You’re perfect. Babe, just let me have you.’

Guan Shan swears. Writhes. Lets him.

He Tian loses himself after that, gives himself over to drum-beat pulses. To Guan Shan’s loose-limb trembling, the tight coil of tension that He Tian leeches from Guan Shan with every graze of teeth, every flattened press of his tongue, every hollow of his cheeks and the palette of spit and blood on Guan Shan’s lips.

He can feel when Guan Shan’s close, the heel of Guan Shan’s shoe digging vicious into his shoulder blades. The sounds from Guan Shan’s throat go keening and breathless and silent; his back lifts from the seat, torso shuddering, fingers scrambling and stinging at He Tian’s scalp as he pulls at his hair.

A swipe of He Tian’s tongue on the underside of his cock—a tug on the metal—fingernails digging into Guan Shan’s scarred chest—hot flesh pooling in He Tian’s mouth, smiling, expectant, ready—and he’s undone.

 

* * *

 

He Tian buttons Guan Shan’s jeans up for him while he’s still lying weightless and spent on the backseat of the patrol car. He smiles to himself as Guan Shan still trembles with the aftershocks, the kisses of little deaths rendering him speechless and unsteady in a way that he’s only like after sex.

There’s blood drying at the corner of Guan Shan’s mouth where his lip split, at the curve of his waist where a shallow cut reopened. Sweat prickles at his temples and the receding flush of his chest, and outside the air is growing muggy and close like a second skin.

Guan Shan swallows, throat dry and clicking. ‘What about you—’

‘Next time,’ He Tian says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He pulls out of the backseat and brushes his uniform down.

Guan Shan pushes up on his elbows, eyes narrowed. ‘Are you fucking kidding me? Get myself arrested for _that_. You’re a cunt.’

He Tian laughs. Reality always snaps back like a rubber band, some mirror of heat and burning pleasure shattered. He gets it—he understands Guan Shan’s uncertainty. The fear that if he didn’t break the moment, a summer storm after a heatwave, then things between them would stay like that forever. That safe. That sweet. That close.

‘Or we could skip the arrest,’ He Tian says easily. He rests his arms on the car roof, and stoops low so he can look through to him. ‘You could come to my place. Old times.’

‘Old times,’ Guan Shan echoes. He tries to hide a wince as he sits up fully, lets his legs hang out the side of the car. His knees rest against He Tian’s thighs. Kissing would be easy like this.

‘Old times. New times.’ He Tian shrugs. ‘We could make it something for now.’

‘You think it’s that easy.’

He Tian watches him. There isn’t derision in that statement. It’s almost a question. Almost childlike with hope that—yes. Yes, it _could be._

‘It could be,’ He Tian says. ‘If you wanted it enough. We’ve played this game since school. What’s one more risk?’

‘You don’t know who I am,’ Guan Shan says. ‘You’ve never known—never _got it_. You don’t know what I’ve done, the things I’ve—’

He Tian cuts him off. ‘Yeah, all right, you’re not an angel.’ He shifts, readjusts his footing. The sun is warm at his back. He can still taste Guan Shan in his mouth. The handcuffs are abandoned in the footwell. There are new bruises and mouth-shaped impressions on Guan Shan’s skin. ‘You think I am?’

‘Didn’t used to think so.’ Guan Shan squints, looks off somewhere. ‘But you’re the one with the gun and the arrest warrant, and I’m the one…’ He rubs his palms over his thighs, pretty hands made scarred and bloodied.

He Tian arches a brow at Guan Shan’s words. He realises he’s smiling, but he can’t help it. ‘That’s just law, Guan Shan,’ he says lazily. ‘That’s just a kind of power. Anyone can have a gun. Anyone can recite some pretty lines about _rights_. Thought you of all people would know that doesn’t make them _good_.’

Guan Shan looks back at him. ‘Weird,’ he mutters. ‘That was your chance to be an arrogant bastard. Should’ve taken it.’

He Tian laughs. ‘You wouldn’t have believed me anyway. You know me too well.’

He waits for Guan Shan to reject that, to shove it aside. He doesn’t think Guan Shan would want the kind of responsibility that comes with something like that. Knowing someone fully, knowingly, no stone left unturned. Wet earth and worms left to crawl out.

He Tian’s mind picks at him. What was that line?

_It’s a rare thing to know someone completely, to the core, and still love them._

He sighs and steps back. There’s space between them know, a sealed airlock broken. Now, they can breathe. The heat is a natural one. Cars are swarming down on the road at the end of the track, a city springing to life around them.

‘I’ll call you,’ He Tian says.

‘I never said yes.’

‘Like I need you to say yes.’

Guan Shan’s look is flame-hot and bilious. He says, ‘You don’t have my number.’

He Tian smirks. ‘It’ll be on file. I’m a cop, remember?’

Guan Shan snorts. ‘Sure you are.’

He Tian pauses. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he asks carefully.

Guan Shan lets his eyes wander, full of scorn and derision. Something else too. ‘Just ‘cause you wear the uniform, He Tian…’

He doesn’t need to say anything more. He Tian remembers middle school. High school. How Guan Shan’s eyes would flicker over him, quick snatches like a thief stealing silent and fast before being caught. He Tian always caught him. Said nothing. But he knew what the look meant, beside other things: _You’re not a student. You’re not a kid. You’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing surrounded by a flock of sheep. You’re_ fake.

He Tian shrugs it off. ‘Make sure you get treated for those,’ he says, nodding at the cuts. ‘They’ll get infected.’

‘You’re not gonna play nurse again?’

‘D’you want me to?’ He Tian asks. When the silence stretches, he tilts his head. ‘You know, I’ve got a proper kit at my apartment. You can shower. I can—we can have breakfast.’

He thinks Guan Shan will push that away, snarl at the domesticity of the idea. The image of it is halting. It’s not one he’s ever allowed himself to have. Thinking about it, calling that image to flesh, makes his heart ache. But when Guan Shan just looks at him, doesn’t spit at it, He Tian wonders how much he’s changed too.

No, not _changed_ , He Tian has to tell himself. _He’s_ the one that hasn’t changed—still too used to knowing what to expect from other people. Predicting them in all their human nature. Because the only one that’s ever proved him wrong so continuously has been Guan Shan.

‘Fine,’ Guan Shan says. Before He Tian can respond, before he can even think, Guan Shan is getting to his feet, making his way around the front of the car, the bare span of his back on show, lit golden by sunlight, and setting himself down in the passenger seat. He kicks his feet on the dashboard, slams the door shut. ‘Come on then!’ he shouts out the window.

He Tian feels a grin start to split at his lips.

The radio on his shoulder crackles to life.

‘307, what is your status?’

He Tian cranes his neck to the radio. ‘This is 307,’ He Tian says. He catches Guan Shan’s gaze through the window, a red-eyed stare in the rearview mirror. ‘10-45 neutralised. No charges. I’m signing out.’

The dispatch voice comes halting and unsure. ‘You’ve still got two hours—’

He Tian turns the radio off. There’s nothing unsure about the action. He feels, suddenly, like he knows exactly what he’s doing. Maybe there’ll be a fallout, nuclear and ruinous. Maybe this is a risk. But He Tian’s not unused to that.

He knows risk like he knows the heady taste in his mouth, and he’ll swallow it all whole.

**Author's Note:**

> Please kudos if you enjoyed! [Find me on Tumblr.](http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/)


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